notes toward a symposium

This zine was produced by the 2024–25 participants of the Independent Study Program’s Critical Studies symposium, which was set to be held at the Whitney Museum on May 18, 2025. The participants decided to cancel the symposium after the Whitney’s overreach—in the form of surveillance and censorship—made it impossible to share their work freely in the Museum. The statement the symposium participants released detailing their decision is available here. The zine collects brief notes about each participant’s paper and was produced independently in advance of the symposium. 

Joanna Evans is a theater artist and performance scholar from Cape Town, South Africa. Their research focuses on improvisational performance and histories of black environmentalism, while their creative practice is organized around devised theater and collective inquiry. Their scholarship appears in TDR: The Drama Review, Women&Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Performance Research, and Ecumencia Journal. They are currently completing a PhD in performance studies at New York University and will begin a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute in the Fall. 

Adrienne Jacobson Oliver is an artist-researcher living and working in the American South. Through speculative methodologies blending poetry, performance, and visual art, her creative practice addresses how B/blackness articulates itself in vernacular, sensual, and sonic anarrangements. Having trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before studying film and media theory at the University of Virginia, she holds an MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been supported by PEN America, Tin House, Burnaway, the National Endowment for the Arts, and appeared in The Plentitudes, Apogee Journal, Puerto del Sol, and the Virginia Film Festival. 

Sahar Khraibani is a writer and artist from Beirut whose work has appeared in Montez Press, The Brooklyn Rail, Magnum Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, and the Poetry Project among many others. Sahar is a recipient of the Creative Capital / Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant, an Emerge—Surface—Be Fellowship at The Poetry Project, a MacDowell Fellowship, and is a 2024 artist in residence at Mass MoCA. Sahar serves as faculty at Pratt Institute and Brooklyn College. “Anatomy of a Refusal” is forthcoming from 1080PRESS. 

Stella Liantonio is a writer and freelance curator, whose methodological approach focuses on collaborative practices. Their work has been presented in independent art spaces in Switzerland (Duplex, One gee in fog, Espace eeeh!, FMAC), and Italy (PARSEC Bologna). In 2023, they have been a resident at the MACRO Museum of Contemporary art of Rome. They hold a MA in Critical and Curatorial studies from the University of the Arts of Geneva, Switzerland and a BA in Continental Philosophy from the University of Venice. 

Genevieve Lipinsky de Orlov is an art historian, critic, and editor, and the cofounder and editor of The Public Review, a publication for long-form art criticism. Genevieve is also a PhD candidate at SUNY Stony Brook, researching practices that intervene in art's commodification for an economic history of postwar art. 

Iulia Nistor is a philosopher and a visual artist from Romania. She holds a PhD from the Department of Theoretical Philosophy at Regensburg University, Germany, and a Meisterschüler from Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Her work is situated between philosophy of mind, epistemology, and aesthetics. In her dissertation, she used the paradox of fiction as a perspective tool to analyze the concept of intentionality. Her research has been supported by the Bavarian state, Stiftung Kunstfonds, and the DAAD. The book "properties without objects" is forthcoming. 

Stephen Woo is a PhD candidate in the department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Starting this Fall, he will be Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at Marist College. His academic writing on global cinema and film theory has been published or is forthcoming in The Journal for Cinema and Media Studies, New Literary History, and Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies.